From Chaos to Calm: How to Master Functional Cognition

Life is busy! Appointments and commitments fill our days. Keeping track of each family members’ appointments and commitments meant an overwhelm of information that I simply could not remember. Memory issues or functional cognition is a common symptom of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). Days impacted by tiredness, sickness and pain often exasperates symptoms of functional cognition. Most of the time, I did not know if I was supposed to be coming or going. I needed to escape the mental chaos and find calm.

Not only would I forget appointments, work rosters or anything that my husband says. Keys, phone, wallet would appear to grow legs and walk away. All of those wonderful school letters and notices would seem to vanish into a void. It was like, if my head was not physically attached to my body, I would lose that too!

We tried many ideas, attempting to find a solution. Apps or online calendars was trialled but to no avail – daughter too young for her own device, a mother who is not able to use a phone and a son who detests technology meant these were not an option for the whole family. Diaries would join the keys, phone and wallet in their escapades, all of them seemingly sprinting around the house like they are playing a game of hide and seek.

Solution

Then the idea of a command centre came. Finally, all those hours trolling through organisation blog posts and Pinterest photos actually proved beneficial. All the various designs, shapes and sizes of command centres came to life. Now I just needed to implement it. Here’s the strategy that we used to decide on what we needed:

• First: define the problem and determine what was needed. Needed a place for a calendar to prioritise our day, storage for letters, notes and invoices and a way to secure phones, wallets and keys plus storage for bags and a junk drawer.
• Second: decide on a location that is easily accessible. Placing it near our back door means whenever we come and go, what we need is there. Serving as a visual reminder of what we need to take or what we need to do and where we need to go – this also helps the ADHD brain.
• Third: find the items – thank you to Ikea and a shout out to my husband for his assembly skills (under my careful instruction of course).
• Finally: use it. Play around with the configuration and implement.

The best thing is – it actually works! Not just for me, but also for our daughter who also has FND and our son with ADHD. A simple calendar, printed in A3 each month, records appointments, school or family events. The kids even suggested colour coding the calendar to help them recognise whose appointment belongs to who. I even included rubbish days, dog worming, plant watering and other house tasks to help share the responsibility. Keys, wallets and phones are secure, school and work bags are stored neatly and a junk drawer that is no longer overflowing was the other benefit.

After having FND for so many years, I know my cognition can be impacted especially on “bad days”, hence the need for an alternative solution. The solution needed to be simple and easy but also effective. For me, my FND has been pretty much lifelong. Living with functional cognition issues means I need work arounds at times. Using a calendar to record everything for the family, clears up valuable mind space to focus on other important tasks. Does it matter if it’s not so-called Pinterest worthy – NO! It works and that is all I care about.

Our brain and body already have enough to deal with. Taking the extra burden off by having a designated area for a calendar to record everything and a place to store everything provides a sense of relief. Regardless of having functional cognition issues or not, our lives are so chaotic we need to find opportunities where we can and introduce calm in our daily lives.